Nerves of Steele
by Obsidian Productions
Summary: Alex Steele has been fighting against the Covenant for over half his life now. When he arrives at a mysterious ringworld known only as Halo, it launches him on a journey of heart-pounding action, breathtaking beauty, and mind-numbing terror that will span years and worlds.
1. BOOK 1: Boarding Action

**BOOK ONE  
**–Raw Steele–

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**RECOMMENDED SONG:** _Diary of Jane by Breaking Benjamin_

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Alex Steele opened his eyes to a doomed universe.

Somewhere, through the distant corridors of whatever ship or station he was on-

(the hiss of filtered oxygen)

(the incredibly subtle distinction between real and artificial gravity pulling on his bones)

(the telltale shuddering of an entire superstructure under attack)

-something exploded. Alex caught movement to his immediate right as his brain came back online, feeding him a sensory overload of information.

"Finally, you're up."

He twisted his head to the right and spied a grizzled face staring at a readout built into the table he was laying on. Infirmary. He was in an infirmary. Another explosion, and somewhere he heard the rattle of assault rifle fire, then the distinctive pulsing of a plasma rifle returning fire. His heart rate spiked. Wherever he'd been brought to, they'd obviously also brought the war with them. A bad situation to wake up to.

"Where am I?" Alex asked, then coughed, his throat dry.

"The _Pillar of Autumn_," the man, a Marine, grunted. He tapped something on the readout, his frown deepening.

Alex sat up, then groaned. Hot fire flooded his guts and a pulse of bright white pain ripped through his brittle skull. "Where's my armor? I need to get back to Reach," he managed, closing his eyes and willing the pain away.

The Marine offered a bark of disillusioned, bitter laughter. "Reach is gone, son."

Alex's eyes snapped open. "_What?_"

"Covenant glassed it to hell and back. We're long past Reach." He grunted suddenly and turned away. Alex heard rummaging.

"What day is it?" he asked.

"September nineteenth."

Alex felt true fear stab at him. Three weeks? He had been unconscious for damn near three _weeks_!? He knew the damage had been bad, he was almost positive he'd die from his wounds, but still…

"Here." The Marine returned, holding a syringe of cloudy liquid. He held it up to the light, squinted at it, flicked the glass cylinder a few times, then pressed in the plunger a few centimeters. A bit of the liquid squirted out the top. "No time to swab," he muttered, and stuck Alex in the arm. He watched the liquid disappear into his bloodstream.

"What's happening? Where are we?" he asked. It dawned on him that it was not a medic waking him up. In fact, he looked around the infirmary he was in: there was no one here but the two of them. He heard the chattering of an MA5B once more, much closer this time, then the pulsing whine of a plasma rifle, also much closer.

Someone screamed.

"Damn," the Marine growled. "No idea where we are, we've been on the run. Covenant finally caught up. I saw there was an ODST laid up here, we need you on your feet, Private Steele. You aren't exactly up to mil-spec, but we need every available body right now."

Alex almost corrected him, but on the heels of this thought came a memory: his demotion. And on the heels of that came the assertion of conviction: _It was still worth it._ He began to ask another question, but the door across the room chimed and slid open. Both men turned to stare at it, the Marine's hand falling to the butt of his M6D in its hip holster. That same cold stab of fear returned, much more powerfully this time, as he saw an Elite sheathed in shiny blue armor step into the room. It held a plasma rifle.

It raised the plasma rifle.

The Marine shoved Alex off the table and screamed as he pulled his pistol out, drew a bead on the big alien warrior, and opened fire. Alex's ears rang as the pistol started pounding out explosive rounds. Sounds came to him as he scrambled into a better position, crouching and putting his back to the examination table he'd been resting on. Sounds came to him as he cycled through a list of potential responses to this rapidly developing situation. His hands kept wanting to go for his hip or next to his ribs, where his weapons would normally be, but he was completely unarmed. Not even a goddamned combat knife to his name!

The Elite roared.

The Marine shouted.

The pistol barked.

The whine of a plasma rifle sounded, the Marine screamed, and then the thump of a body hitting the deckplates. Alex whirled and stood and scanned the area as two facts came to him: it was useless to go for the pistol because he'd heard every last shot fired out of it, the Elite was vulnerable because he could see the telltale sparkling of an overwhelmed shield and the white haze of an overheated plasma weapon.

He had precious little time to act on this.

Alex's gaze zeroed on a table halfway in between him and the Elite, which was eyeing him with intense malevolence. Steel glinted in the bright white lights of the medbay. His gaze flicked to the Elite, locked briefly with its eyes, and he saw nothing but hatred and merciless liquid black. Time to move. He sprinted forward, vaulted over the examination table, stuck the landing but damn near fell as his legs went wobbly underneath him, his muscles protesting. He stumbled forward, hurled himself up onto the next table with the glinting silver medical tools, and snatched up the scalpel he'd spied. The Elite was coming for him, roaring.

Had to do this just right…

Alex threw himself forward at the big, eight-foot bastard and drove the tip of the razor-sharp blade directly into one of its eyes. The Elite roared and stumbled backwards, dropping its rifle. It began screaming in a deep, guttural voice, grabbing for him. Alex ducked, dodged, then stepped forward and palmed the scalpel hard, shoving it deeper into whatever served the alien monster as brains. That did it. The Elite froze up like a statue, spasmed twice, then toppled over with a resounding metal _clack_ as its armored body smashed to the deckplates.

Alex stood there over his fresh kill, breathing heavily, trembling.

Bad sign. It wasn't just adrenaline that had him shaking. He'd been comatose for three weeks. Even with all the medical marvels they'd (hopefully) had him hooked up to to help with muscle atrophy, he'd still be off his game. As it was, he felt like he was walking around with his head floating three feet above his body. Like a cloud had taken up residence in his mind. He shook his head to try and clear it, but that just hurt.

Alex focused on the pain. Too much would overwhelm him, but just enough would give him an anchor. Which he needed badly right now, judging from the state of things. Whatever was happening, wherever he was, whoever might be around, he was _clearly_ in danger.

"Okay, okay, get your crap together," he whispered to himself as he looked around the infirmary. His eyes fell briefly to the Marine who had saved his life. He'd never even learned the man's name. He strode over and knelt.

"Thank you," he said quietly as he began patting the dead man down for supplies.

Apparently, he'd been in pretty dire straits, because all he had on him was that M6D and one spare magazine of ammo. Alex grabbed it and reloaded it with an automated proficiency, an action he had performed probably over two thousand times so far. He unhooked the holster on the man's belt, then frowned, looking down at himself. All he had on was a basic hospital gown. First thing was first: he needed a proper uniform.

Alex began hunting quickly through the infirmary, which looked like it had been hastily abandoned. He absently found a rag and wiped his hand off, as some of the Elite's purplish blood had splattered on his palm during the skirmish. It stank. He vaguely recognized the name _Pillar of Autumn_. It had been among the comm chatter near the end there, he was almost positive, and he had the inclination it was a military vessel. Which meant this was a military infirmary. While pulling on some Marine fatigues wasn't exactly what he had in mind, he'd settle for them, because he was a pragmatic man at his core, and he very much doubted they had ODST standard-issue uniforms just laying around. Sure enough, he found some fatigues a moment later.

Stripping off the hospital gown, he hastily pulled on the uniform. He winced as he worked. His stomach wound was healed, (he had a new scar to go with that one, he could see), but the pain was still there. His head was in a bitch of a state, too.

Did he have brain damage?

He started rattling off facts about himself for peace of mind as he dressed. "Corp-" he sighed. "Private Alex Steele. Orbital Drop Shock Troopers. Born June seventeen twenty five twenty three on Lotus Prime," he muttered. "Joined twenty five thirty nine–yeah, okay, I'm all here." He finished getting the uniform on, then frowned, glancing at his feet. No boots. He looked around and once more his gaze fell on the unnamed Marine.

"Sorry," he muttered as he came over, dropped into a crouch, and relieved the man of his boots. "I need 'em more than you do right now."

He pulled them on and laced up, then attached the holster to his hip. Standing up, he felt somewhat better. Again, the _Pillar_ shuddered around him. Overhead, he heard the shipwide intercom system click on. _"__All hands, this is the Captain. Prepare to abandon ship! Combat Teams, repel boarders until Ops personnel are away. Good luck. Keyes out."_

Well, that was a pretty clear summation of the situation, at least.

Alex hesitated for a moment. He needed his armor. He was screwed without it. But where would they have put it? Surely they wouldn't have discarded it. His eyes fell to a terminal built into the wall and he hurried over to it. Working fast, he was glad to see that nothing was locked down right now. He hunted through the files and found his own. He scanned through the information: cranial trauma, brain bleed, perforated intestine, perforated kidney. Damn, ugly stuff. Well, that was what happened when you went one on one with an Elite and _didn't_ get lucky. Although he knew he was lucky as to walk away intact (technically) from that encounter back on Reach.

There!

Personal effects. Storage Room 17-B.

Alex checked a map of the area, then frowned. Why had they stowed his gear so far away?! At least it was a relatively simple path: right, left, right, left. He left the terminal, moving over to the Elite's corpse. He kicked the split-jawed thing in its ugly face and picked up the discarded plasma rifle. Alex grunted as he checked the energy level readout: it was close to empty. Bastard had been busy. He searched the body for plasma grenades and found none.

The bastard had been _really_ busy.

He resisted the urge to kick the face again, or to stomp on it, to hear that snap as the mandibles broke beneath his scavenged boots, (it would be oddly appropriate, given the context), and instead moved over to the door through which the Elite had entered earlier. He paused, listening. There didn't seem to be any further conflict happening in the immediate area. Alex took a few deep breaths and let them out slowly.

He could do this.

He _had_ to do this.

He passed through the door.

Outside was a broad, tall hallway, the normal kind that tunneled through the UNSC's starships. He looked left, but the metal tunnel terminated quickly in a battle-scarred bulkhead and a few doors that led to other infirmaries and storage rooms. He ignored that for now and headed right. Bodies were in the hallway with him: two Marines and a technician, broken in death, laying in random postmortem poses. Farther on, he could see a few oddly shaped lumps: Grunts. He paused by each of the corpses, hunting for supplies. The technician was unarmed, and the one MA5B he found among them had been damaged by what looked like brute force. Either by the Elite, or the Marine in question had used it as a bludgeon more than once against something really tough.

Either way, it was a lost cause.

There were a pair of plasma pistols among the Grunt corpses, though. He figured out which one was more charged and attached it to his other hip at the belt. Still no plasma grenades. Something hit the hull nearby and the entire area trembled. Was he screwed? It was possible. Alex had managed to survive for this long, but that still didn't mean he was any more capable of surviving an entire starship exploding than anyone else. He had to find his gear, and then locate the nearest escape pods and get the hell out of here.

At least his priorities were clear.

He made his way briskly down the corridor, checking his corners and any potential hiding places for more Covenant, but he seemed to be clear for now. Hitting his intersection, he hooked a left, keeping the map and his position on it firmly in his mind's eye. As he pressed on, thoughts drifted through his aching skull. He still hadn't fully processed the fact that the planet Reach was gone. Was it really _that_ bad? Was it really _gone_? It seemed impossible. Ironically, that thought should be impossible, because something you learned when you lived the kind of life Alex Steele lived was that: impossible was nothing, and nothing was impossible.

He'd bore witness to so many bad things that he no longer even had a bar to lower. He pretty much felt like anything, no matter how crappy, was not only possible but, at this point, likely. It sounded pessimistic, but he still felt himself a realist. But Reach...that was kind of like a last bastion for humanity, besides Earth. The idea that it was just gone, that the Covenant had finally come and done the deed, it just felt…

Unreal.

But he had been there, trying to hold that planet together for over a month. It had been a long, nasty, brutal conflict that had ultimately ended with him in a coma, apparently. So where were they _now_? Some other planet? Dead space? He hoped not, given the fact that they were evacuating. Ideally there would be somewhere to evac to. As Alex came to the next turn in the maze of corridors, he paused. Plasma fire whined up ahead. He heard the high-pitched yapping of Grunts and the much deeper voice of an Elite calling out in its brutish language. He readjusted his grip on the plasma rifle and jogged carefully up to the turn.

More gunfire, and someone screamed.

Not in pain, but in fear. So, someone alive. Having someone to watch his back would help him a hell of a lot in this situation. He peered around the corner, then pulled back after scoping the situation out: one Elite, five grunts. They were firing at someone, who was hidden from sight. And he didn't hear any return fire. Definitely a bad sign. Alex looked down at the plasma rifle in his hand, frowning. He didn't like his odds.

Then a notion came to him, and he smiled a grim smile. He peered around again, confirmed that it could (probably) work, and then began sneaking forward. He was going to have to do this right and quickly, or he'd get real dead, real fast. Alex slipped right up to the rear-most Grunt, reached down to one of the plasma grenades on its belt, activated it, and then gave the Grunt a good, hard shove with the bottom of his boot.

The Grunt screamed in surprise, and all the other Grunts leaped in shock, and the Elite made a noise that was half angry, half inquisitive, and turned around. Alex was already falling back, staring at the Grunt with the smoldering ball of blue-white plasma attached to it, and right about the second he managed to fall back to cover, he saw the entire group of them go up in a great eruption of blue and white energy.

They all screamed for approximately one half of a second.

When the explosions stopped and the dust began to settle, Alex peered back around the corner. The entire contingent had been practically vaporized. There were pieces of armor and charred flesh scattered all over the corridor, and several ruined weapons, and that was all that remained of them. He made his way quickly through the hellishly redecorated section of the hallway and began tracking down whoever they'd been shooting at.

A moment later, he found a technician cowering in a small side alcove.

He let out a startled shout as Alex appeared in his field of view, then he let out a nervous laugh, the relief written plainly on his pale features. "Oh my God, you saved my ass," he said, his voice shaky. He laughed again, his eyes huge.

"What's your name?" Alex asked as he walked forward and offered a hand.

"Fleming," the man replied. He took Alex's hand and was pulled firmly to his feet. "You?"

"Steele."

"Hey, um...where's your armor?" Fleming asked.

"In a storage closet. I'm going to get it right now."

"Why would it be in a storage closet?"

"Fleming, we don't have time for this. Are you armed?"

"I-no. I lost my weapon," he muttered sheepishly. Alex sighed, considered his options, then passed the plasma rifle to the man.

"Can you handle this?"

"I...yeah, I can manage."

"Good. It's almost dead, so use it sparingly. Stay behind me, shut up, and do not engage unless it is absolutely necessary."

"Okay," the tech replied.

So, he had someone else with him...and it was a technician. He didn't dislike techs, but he really would have preferred someone whose training was more combat-oriented. Pushing out the acrid smell of burned flesh and flash-fried blood, Alex pulled the pistol from its sheath and moved on. Top priority right now was getting his damned armor. He felt painfully exposed without it. The way ahead looked clear, for now.

Alex moved past bulkheads scored by battle and time, cautious of every door, every support strut built into the center of the passageways. The Covenant were clearly here in force, infecting the vessel like an alien virus. He found himself wanting to find and murder every last one of them, but there was no time for that. Wasn't that always the case? When was the last time he had found himself with an abundance of time during combat? They reached the final turn and he held up his fist as he heard something.

Fleming froze. Alex approached the edge and peered slowly around it, pistol at ready. A trio of Grunts stood about five meters away down the corridor, congregating outside the very storage room he needed to get into. Time to rectify the situation. Alex leaned out further, aimed, and squeezed the trigger three times. He carefully picked off the Grunts, doling out a headshot for each. They hit the deckplates and Alex waited for reinforcements.

None came.

"Come on," he said, sliding smoothly into the corridor. Fleming followed wordlessly. He checked the Grunts' corpses in passing, securing plasma pistols for himself and Fleming, as well as a pair of plasma grenades. He really preferred frags, but these certainly had their own appeal. "Wait here," he said as he approach Storage Room 17-B. He tapped the open button and secured the room beyond, finding it empty of life.

Alex quickly began searching. He wanted off this ship. Every time it rumbled and rattled from an impact tremor, it was that much closer to breaking up or outright exploding, and you couldn't fight an explosion.

"Do you know where we are right now?" Alex asked as he searched.

Fleming stood in the doorway, keeping watch. Or at least Alex hoped that's what he was doing. "No, but they said there's some kind of huge...installation, or something, nearby?"

"Who's they?"

"I ran into some Marines who said they'd heard from a tech who was friends with a guy on the bridge that there's this big installation and that's where we're regrouping."

Alex considered that. Installation? Like a space station? Or...what? What did that even mean? Well, if it was solid ground, he supposed it'd have to do.

"There!" he whispered, finally popping open the correct crate and finding his armor packed away. He decoupled his holster from his hip and set it and the plasma pistol and grenades aside on a nearby table, then quickly began pulling on his sleek black armor.

"Whoa, you're an ODST?" Fleming asked.

"Yep," Alex replied.

"How long?"

"Three years."

"Wow."

That was an understatement. Alex felt like he'd done more in his three years as an ODST than the dozen years he'd served as a Marine. Which was saying something, given all he'd done there. He finished getting his armor on by securing the helmet. Once it was sealed into place, he booted up the internal systems and then ran a quick check of the suit. He'd just replaced the suit's power unit before the damage, and he was glad to see that whoever it was that had taken care of him had seen fit to replace his helmet and torso piece, considering they were broken pretty badly. And apparently the charge had held, the suit properly shut down and stored.

He was almost at full power, which meant he wouldn't have to go hunting for replacements. Perfect. Alex quickly reassembled his arsenal and rejoined Fleming at the door. "Where are the nearest escape pods?" he asked.

Fleming looked deeply relieved. "There's a hangar not far from here."

"Then let's go."

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**AUTHOR'S NOTE: **Hello, readers! I hope you enjoyed the chapter. It's been pointed out to me that probably most people are now reading through a mobile app nowadays, which might make you less prone to leaving reviews. I just wanted to say that reviews genuinely help, even simple ones, and I would seriously appreciate it if you'd consider doing so for me.


	2. BOOK 1: Pillar's Fall

**RECOMMENDED SONG: **_Away by Breaking Benjamin_

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Alex felt more like himself now that he had his armor on.

All around him, the _Pillar_ shook and shuddered with the contractions not of birth, but of death. And it was fast encroaching on his reality, preparing to take him down with it. Those pods were his number one priority now. He and Fleming were making their way down corpse-stricken passageways. They moved among metal bulkheads painted liberally with a kaleidoscope of blood and tattooed with plasma scoring and bullet holes. Alex listened closely, trying to re-calibrate his carefully honed senses. The suit and the stim helped, but being in a coma for three weeks and then being jump-started out of it so abruptly was seriously screwing with him.

He was in a lot of pain, his head kept wanting to go swimmy, his vision was irritatingly blurry, and his thoughts were a bit muddled. It was a pretty bad state to be in, given the present circumstances. At least Fleming was keeping quiet, except for the occasional gasp or sharply drawn breath whenever the superstructure rattled around them. Alex paused just long enough to scoop up enough ammo to top off his pistol and rifle.

He'd seen thousands of corpses at this point, but he'd never lost that pang of hurt that hit him in the chest whenever he saw another dead human. And there were a lot of men and women in green ballistics armor or orange jumpsuits scattered across their path, broken in death by the Covenant. He was following Fleming's instructions, trusting the man to know what he was doing, though he was beginning to question the man's definition of 'not far'.

"How much farther?" Alex asked as they jogged down another lone passageway.

"Maybe another minute," Fleming replied. "We're really close."

Alex slowed as they approached the end of the corridor, which terminated in a T-junction. There were a pair of barricades positioned in the junction itself, one pointed towards them, the other angled to the right. Probably nothing much down the left passageway then. He put his back to the right wall and waited, listening.

He didn't hear anything nearby.

He poked his head around the corner and saw another desolate stretch of corridor that ended abruptly about five meters away.

"We're supposed to go here?" he asked, motioning for Fleming to join him.

They walked around into the next passageway. "Yeah-crap," the technician whispered. "That shouldn't be closed. I need to check it out."

"Wait here," Alex replied, and made his way down the metal tunnel. There were a few hiding places among the niches in the walls. He cleared each of them with a quick check and found them all to be empty, then he waved Fleming over. "See what you can do."

The tech nodded tightly and stood before a control panel embedded in the wall to the right of the sealed bulkhead. That was the one big problem with space-borne locations: they were so overprotective about hull breaches that the locking systems they had in place were a little trigger-happy. Well, that wasn't necessarily a problem given how bad hull breaches could be…

Something metal hit the floor back the way they'd come.

"What was that?" Fleming whispered.

"Focus," Alex replied. "I'll be right back."

He looked pale, but got back to work. Alex made his way quickly and quietly back down the passageway, listening intently. He thought he heard a snuffling breath. A Grunt. He switched to his pistol, letting his assault rifle hang from the shoulder strap and carefully drawing it. It remained quiet as he closed the gap to the corner, and for a few seconds he thought that perhaps he was hearing things in his diminished state.

Then he leaned around the corner, exposing as little of himself as possible, and felt his pulse quicken. There were three Elites leading a pack of Grunts down the passageway. They were slow, and still about twenty meters back, but they _were_ coming his way. He quickly pulled back around and moved back over to Fleming.

"How's it going?"

"I don't think I can get it open."

"Then we need an alternate route."

Fleming looked around uncertainly. "I'm not sure...maybe we can go back the way we came."

"That's not an option," Alex replied flatly.

"What? Why?"

He'd been hoping to avoid panicking the man, as he'd noticed that Fleming didn't quite seem the type to work better under pressure, but their window was closing. "We have incoming. There's a maintenance tunnel entrance three meters back, can you get it open?"

"I can try," Fleming replied.

"Make it happen, fast as you can."

They moved back and found the hatch in one of the side niches Alex had checked earlier. It hadn't opened when he had initially approached it, and he'd at first taken that as a good sign, meaning it would be harder for something to sneak into the hallway with him. Now it might get him killed. He left Fleming working on getting it open and returned to his previous position. Peering carefully around the corner again, he saw that the Covenant squad had crossed half the distance now. He waited, watching them cautiously.

If at all possible, he would avoid this confrontation. Even if he was in top form, three Elites and nearly a dozen Grunts were very poor odds. It was possible that they might head into one of the side hallways they'd passed on the way here, or get distracted by something, or go back the way they'd come. He had three grenades on him. The pair of plasmas, and only a single frag he'd managed to gather so far. Judging by all the soot marks and explosives damage, it was obvious that the Marines had been using their grenades freely.

He didn't blame them.

Seconds ticked by, feeling swollen and lethargic. Waiting was always the worst. Alex licked his lips, again reminded of how dry his mouth was. There hadn't been time for even a simple drink, although he was wishing he had made time. He was no doubt dehydrated. He waited. The Covenant continued drifting gradually closer. Fleming continued working. His heart pounded in his chest. When they drew within ten meters, Alex pulled out one of his plasma grenades. This situation was rapidly going to become untenable.

Pulling back around briefly, he whispered to Fleming for an update.

"Almost," Fleming murmured back.

Great. What did _that_ mean?

Alex pulled back around, and one of the Grunts happened to look directly at him as he did. It let out a loud shriek, then began yapping madly, raising its plasma pistol. Well, there went the element of surprise. A general cry of alarm went up and the Covenant began scrambling for cover. Not one to waste an opportunity, Alex primed the grenade and snapped it forward, hurling it as hard and as accurately as he could manage.

It connected with the very Grunt that had spotted him.

Good, served it right.

The thing began screaming and running about. He pulled back around and waited until the resulting explosion hit. He was very satisfied to hear another explosion, and then a third one touch off as other plasma grenades were detonating. Alas, he saw as he peered back around, pistol out and aiming, searching for targets, it had been too much to hope for a repeat performance of the last time he'd done something involving plasma grenades.

The Covenant had scattered across the passageway, the Grunts largely remaining in the open, the Elites taking cover. One behind one of the support pillars in the center of the hallway, the other two on either side of it in small alcoves. Alex got to work. He aimed and fired, dropping to one knee as he did so, and started putting down the Grunts. One went, two, three...he capped four of them before the survivors managed to scatter, bringing their total down by a fair number. The Elite in the middle had blue armor, marking it as more inexperienced. And that wasn't the only thing doing so. Although he saw the telltale sparking of an overwhelmed personal shield unit across its bulky form, the thing leaned out, impatient, and fired at him with its plasma rifle.

Alex didn't pull back. Instead, he aimed and popped off two careful shots. The first round collapsed whatever shielding the unit had built back up since the explosion, the second took it right in its big forehead and splattered its alien brains all over the bulkheads. It clattered to the deckplates. He took two shots to the chestplate that felt like quick but powerful punches, sending him stumbling back into cover, but the Elite was dead.

Several streams of plasma fire stabbed out at him, illuminating the junction in bright blue-white flashes of energy.

"How long!?" Alex snapped.

"Almost done!" Fleming called back.

They were going to have to have a serious conversation about the definition of the word 'almost' just as soon as they were out of combat. Alex tried to give the guy a break. Situations rapidly deteriorated more often than not, especially under fire. He leaned back out and picked off another Grunt, then pulled back around as they returned fire. He emptied his current magazine and half of the next one taking out the rest of the Grunts and whittling down the shields of one of the other Elites. Then he took another two shots to the chest.

"Fleming, where are we at with that door?!" he called, wincing as he felt the burning pain eating into him.

"Done!" Fleming replied after a few seconds.

Alex pulled out his second and final plasma grenade, primed and tossed it, then turned and began hurrying towards the maintenance hatch. "Go! Go!"

Fleming disappeared into the opening. Alex was right behind him. As he heard the explosion, he hit the close button. He had serious doubts that either Elite would be killed by the explosion, but hopefully it would buy them enough time to get the hell out of here. The pair of them hurried down the narrow tunnel, away from the murderous aliens.

Towards escape. Hopefully.

* * *

They navigated the confusing network of maintenance tunnels for two minutes. They only paused once, to investigate a dead Grunt. Obviously someone had been through, and they'd left a sole plasma grenade, which Alex pocketed.

Fleming said he still knew where to go, but they would have to take a detour through a power distribution center. The closer they came to said destination, the more conflict Alex heard. By the time they were almost there, Alex could pick out individual voices. It sounded like an all-out assault was in progress. Because of course there was.

Finally, they came to the last tunnel. Alex could actually see the pulsing flashes of plasma fire through the mesh metal door five meters away.

"I want you to hang back and let me handle this," he said.

"Got it," Fleming replied, sounding relieved.

He hung back as Alex moved up to the door. Peering through, Alex tried to get a sense for what was happening. It was difficult, as a _lot_ was happening. There was a power distribution center, built into a big square of old deckplates and battered bulkheads. Nodes of technology, almost like teeth, grew from the flooring, providing cover for both sides of the conflict. Naturally, the opening let out on the Covenant's side of the room.

Then again, that wasn't actually a bad thing.

There were nearly twice as many of the alien bastards as his fellow humans, and almost a quarter of them were Elites. Not a particularly great situation. But if someone were to mount an assault from the rear, throw everything into chaos, maybe take out one or two of the key players in this battle...Alex prepared himself.

His element of surprise would be gone quickly, so he would have to act fast. Selecting his pistol, he watched the battle carefully. A scattering of Grunts were nearby, snapping off shots with their plasma pistols and missing more often than not. The diminutive little things weren't that much of a threat, but they shouldn't be outright ignored either. Grunts could kill. Especially given the fact that they were prone to throwing plasma grenade, probably their most lethal attribute. There were two Elites nearby, each hunkered safely behind one of the solid, rectangular nodes. They would have to go, and quickly.

His moment to strike came, and he took it.

One of the Elites took enough hits to overload its personal force shield. Alex snagged and primed his only plasma grenade. Bumping the open button, he took one step out as the maintenance door opened silently. Aiming carefully, he snapped his arm forward and threw the plasma grenade at the other Elite that still had most if not all of its shielding. The grenade burst into a brilliant blue-white glare, sailed through the air, and attached to the Elite's back. Before it had time to blow, he turned and raised the pistol in one smooth motion, zeroing his sights on the alien face of the second Elite that now had no shields to its name.

It locked eyes with him for a fraction of a second, or rather, stared directly into his blackened visor...and then he squeezed the trigger. It was a good shot, taking the alien monster just below its right eye and splattering dark purple gore across the tech node behind it. The Elite stood for just a second, twitching violently as its dying nerves misfired, and it popped off a few shots from its plasma rifle. All but one of them fired harmlessly into the deckplates. The one that didn't caught a Grunt in the leg right as it was in the process of activating a plasma grenade.

What luck.

It shrieked and dropped the lit grenade in the midst of four other Grunts.

Alex pulled back. Right as he did, the grenade that he had thrown burst. On the heels of that one, the Grunt's dropped grenade erupted, and it immediately triggered a chain reaction of other grenades, touching off in rapid succession. Charred pieces of Grunt flew past the mesh-door as blue-white light flared madly.

Grunts screamed.

Metal groaned.

Random items pinged off of bulkheads.

When the last of the explosions had burned off, Alex hit the open button again and swept the area with his gaze and barrel of his pistol. There were just a handful of Grunts still alive, and one Elite that was wounded. Even as he was aiming for it, one of the Marines on the other side of the room finished it off. In fact, he only managed to fire off a single shot, snapping one Grunt's head to the side in a spray of bright, phosphorescent blue blood, before the others were wiped out by the survivors.

"Friendlies, coming out!" Alex yelled before emerging from the maintenance tunnel. "Let's go, Fleming."

"Coming," Fleming replied, his voice shaking slightly.

Well, at least he had more backup now.

Half a dozen Marines and a pair of technicians emerged from entrenched positions as the two of them came out.

"Thanks for the help," one of the Marines said, approaching.

"Not a problem. What's the sitrep?" Alex replied, glancing at the man's nameplate. It read **LCpl. CARSON, D**.

As he listened, he began pilfering a few nearby Covenant corpses.

"There's a hangar right next door that's serving as an evac point. We're trying to get as many people, pods, and Pelicans out as we can. This power center is what's powering the hangar, couldn't let it fall into enemy hands. But we're-" He froze, frowning, listening. His eyes widened. "Shit! Covies are making a push on the hangar! We need to get there now!"

They took off, abandoning their efforts to search the recently deceased.

Alex was right behind Carson, who was already hitting the exit and passing through it. He nearly got his head blown off as a string of plasma fire sliced through the air. He wasn't exaggerating: the door literally led into the hangar, nothing else dividing them. Carson kept running until he got behind a pile of crates. Alex held up a fist, freezing the others behind him.

"Going to lay down some suppressing fire. When I say, get to cover, one at a time," he said to the others.

They all quickly snapped off affirmative replies.

Alex peered cautiously around the corner, and nearly got _his_ head blown off. He snapped out a curse as he primed and tossed his only remaining fragmentation grenade around the corner of the door frame. A pair of Elites and a clutch of Grunts were practically right there. He heard several shouts of surprise and the scrabbling of several feet as the Covenant tried to get away from the grenade. As soon as it exploded, he shouted for one of them to go.

The next Marine raced over to join Carson, who was now putting suppressing fire on the scattered Covenant. Alex leaned around the corner and switched to his assault rifle.

"Next! Go!" he shouted, opening fire.

Slews of bullets chopped into Covenant flesh as he let out bursts of gunfire. The MA5B rattled in his hands as he cut down one of the surviving Grunts, then a second one, and then began throwing fire at another Elite that was coming up. When he ran out of ammo, he pulled back and checked his surroundings again. Carson and two of the Marines were behind the stack of crates about five meters away, putting down the Elite he'd dropped the shield of before emptying his rifle. The expansive hangar stretched away from him to either side. They were basically at the halfway point. The left was still largely under human control, but the right, the way he kept leaning around to pop shots at, was heavily contested.

And directly across from them, maybe a good forty meters away, was a row of escape pods. About half of them were still available.

"Carson! We need to start making for the pods!" Alex yelled as he slapped a fresh magazine into his assault rifle.

"Affirmative!" Carson called back. "Keep sending them over!"

He then turned and said something to one of the other Marines, pointing to the next piece of cover in between them and the pods: a Warthog.

Alex looked at the next in line. A grim-looking woman with Covenant blood across her ballistics armor and a very determined expression.

Her nameplate read **LCpl. SMITH, S**.

"Get ready," he said.

She nodded tightly and got as close to the edge as she could without exposing herself. Alex peered around the corner. More Elites were incoming! This was going to be a bitch. What's worse, he could see several dozen Covenant even farther into the room. They were going to lose this position. They had to get out of here.

"Go!" Alex snapped, stepping out, shouldering the rifle, and opening fire once more.

Muzzle flare flashed and he heard a second rattling of bullets as Carson joined him from across the way. The pair poured gunfire into the advancing enemies. Two Grunts went down under the hail of lead, and one of the Elite's shields was overwhelmed. It popped out of existence, sparking as it tried to come back.

Alex didn't give it a chance. He put the rest of his ammo into its head and killed it, dropping the body like a stone.

The next several minutes played out with a feverish intensity as he and Carson kept the Covenant at bay as best they could, and kept sending others over. Two more Marines and another technician showed up behind Alex, making the whole thing take longer, not that he was really in a position to complain.

But finally, the last person went over.

Alex checked his rifle and found that he'd drained it. Cursing, he let it hang and pulled out his pistol. He glanced at Carson, who was still there. He looked ahead, beyond him. Some of the initial techs and Marines had already gone off in a pod, but he could just make out Lance Corporal Smith urging Fleming into another one of the pods that was filling up. And it was among the last of them. A ton had gone in the past few minutes.

And the Covenant numbers were swelling.

"Come on!" Carson snapped.

Alex glanced back and his eyes widened in frustrated anxiety. The previously well-guarded side of the hangar was beginning to collapse. He looked in the other direction. There were _more_ Covenant over there, not less, despite his and Carson's efforts. They must've put down fifty between the two of them. It was now or never.

"Coming!" Alex responded.

Carson laid down some more cover fire and threw a grenade as Alex broke from cover and sprinted the distance between the two of them. Plasma fire stabbed out at him, shooting through the air and coming very close to hitting him more than once. But then he was there, behind the crates with Carson, on his knees.

"Okay, your turn," Alex said as he readied himself.

Carson nodded tightly and moved to the edge of the crates. Alex leaned around and began opening fire. "Go!" he snapped.

Carson ran and Alex fired off four shots into an advancing Elite's shields. They collapsed and he put another two into its misshapen skull, killing it instantly. He ducked back down as plasma fire washed over his position.

"Steele! Move it!" Carson called.

Alex saw that he was behind the Warthog now. As Carson opened fire, he sprinted again, towards his position. He almost made it without a problem. Then his foot hit something, he had no idea what, and he went stumbling, then sprawling. Even with the head-to-toe suit of obsidian ODST armor, it still hurt as he smashed to the deckplates. He rolled a few times, letting his momentum take him, and ended up behind the Warthog.

"That was embarrassing," Alex muttered as he got up, checking to see that he'd held onto his weapons. His rifle was absent, but it had been depleted of ammo anyway.

Carson chuckled. "I thought ODSTs weren't allowed to trip."

"Bite me. Get ready to go, it's your turn," Alex said.

"Yeah, yeah, let's get this over with," Carson replied.

Alex grabbed his pistol and took another sample survey of the situation. This whole hangar was being overrun, but not everyone was out yet. He looked down at his pistol. Suddenly, it didn't feel like enough.

Then he looked up.

At the Light Anti Aircraft Gun that was mounted onto the back of the Warthog they were hiding behind. Alex holstered his pistol.

"What are you doing?" Carson asked.

"Laying down cover fire," Alex replied.

"You'll be a target for fifty of them!"

"Just go," Alex replied. "I'm right behind you."

Carson growled, swore, and then got ready. Alex hopped up lightly onto the back of the Hog and grabbed the LAAG. He brought it around and began spinning the barrel up. There were a _lot_ of them. Alex took aim at the nearest Elite, a crimson-armored veteran leading a charge right for his position now that the suppressing fire had died down.

The Elite had approximately one second to consider its error.

And then a stream of 12.7x99mm armor penetrating rounds slammed into it like a goddamned battering ram. The Elite was physically picked up and thrown backwards into a little crowd of Grunts, sending them flying like ninepins. Its shields didn't even last a chance, becoming overwhelmed in half a second. Before it hit the floor, Alex saw that he'd put a fist-sized hole through its broad chest. He laughed and then began sweeping the chaingun back and forth across the immediate area, taking down as many of the alien creatures as he could.

A dozen Grunts went down.

Two dozen went down, being churned into so much pulpy gore.

He brutally eviscerated a pair of Elites, then another that was making a run for him from the side. Someone was shouting, he realized after a moment.

"_STEELE!_" It was Smith. "_ON! YOUR! SIX!_"

Alex tossed a glance behind him. A crimson armored Elite was hunkered down behind another stack of crates, looking dead at him. She didn't have a line of sight on it, none of them did.

It was priming a plasma grenade.

Well, it was time to go.

He abandoned his position, hopping off the Warthog as the Elite threw the grenade. Alex began to run, to sprint as fast as he could for the escape pod. It was the last one still available, as far as he could tell. Smith was standing by it, firing to his right with a pistol. He pushed himself, booking it. He _needed_ to be on that pod.

Behind him, the grenade exploded, and from the sound of the explosion, it took the Warthog with it. Alex pushed harder, almost there.

He heard Smith shout his name again.

Then something slammed into the back of his helmeted head. He felt an explosion of bright, white pain, and then he was falling.

And then he was returned to the darkness.


	3. BOOK 1: Hard Drop

**RECOMMENDED SONG: **_Stricken by Disturbed_

* * *

When Alex rejoined the world of the conscious, he did so strapped upright into a chair inside of a thing that was rumbling and rattling with the forces of what he automatically determined were a result of orbital reentry.

He groaned and shifted, trying to piece together what the hell was going on through the haze of pain and lethargy.

"You actually awake in there?" a semi-familiar voice asked from nearby. "We couldn't tell. With the, you know, visor."

"I'm awake," he muttered, and finished straightening up. He stretched as much as he could manage in the tight confines of the chair he was attached to, and it all came back to him in a snap. He was inside a Bumblebee EEV, Emergency Escape Vehicle. One of the escape pods he'd been booking it for before that Warthog had blown behind him and, apparently, knocked him out cold. No easy trick with him inside of an ODST suit.

"What happened?" he asked, clearing his throat.

He was still dry as hell.

The voice, what he recognized finally as belonging to Lance Corporal Carson, carried on with mild amusement. "The Warthog blew and one of the tires smacked you right in the back of the head, man. You went out like a light." He paused. "I thought ODSTs weren't allowed to-"

"I'm gonna _show_ you what you can think about ODSTs if you keep talking," Alex grumbled, and Carson and a few of the others laughed.

"And then what?" he asked, popping his neck.

"We dragged your heavy ass into the escape pod-" Carson continued.

"_I_ dragged your heavy ass into the escape pod," a new voice cut in. He glanced over, saw that it was Smith talking.

"Thank you," Alex replied.

"You're welcome. And you owe me."

"Fair enough."

"_Any_way," Carson pressed on, "then we launched. The most meaningful bit of this whole dialogue is that we are apparently landing on a giant ring floating in space."

Alex looked over at him, stared at him for a few seconds. First he was trying to figure out if he'd heard that right, then decided that Carson had spoken with enough clear diction that it couldn't have been anything else. Next he tried to determine if the man was joking, but his tone and expression did not bear this assumption out. Finally, he tried to determine if he was making some kind of reference or euphemism.

But if he was, Alex couldn't parse it out.

"What?" he replied finally.

"I know, it sounds nuts. But yes, I saw it out the front with my own eyes. There's like a giant, and I do mean _giant,_ ring out there, just floating in space. And it's got, apparently, atmosphere, and land, and mountain ranges, and oceans on its inner surface. And that's where we're landing apparently," Carson explained.

Alex considered this for several more seconds. "What kind of resistance can we expect?"

"Literally no idea. But given the fact that the Covenant were already here in force, I'd say there's a good chance they've already got a solid foothold on this place."

Alex grunted. He remembered Fleming mentioning 'an installation'. No wonder no one had gotten past that initial description. He wanted to see this damned thing for himself, but he had no view, not that it'd matter now, given they were already cutting through the atmosphere. Part of him kept trying to disbelieve it. It was insane. There just happens to be this giant artificial installation in the shape of a ring with atmosphere and water and landmasses? And they just happened to arrive there? If they'd been following the Cole Protocol, which he surmised there was a ninety-nine percent likelihood of them doing, they'd have made a blind jump.

The odds against getting to something like this had to be freaking astronomical.

Then again, the odds against something like this _existing_ had to be too.

But he sure as hell felt that familiar rumbling of a vessel entering an atmosphere. Atmosphere...a nasty idea suddenly struck him.

"So can we breathe it?" he asked. His suit could hold about half an hour of oxygen on its most conservative settings, and he didn't know if it was topped off or not.

Carson looked suddenly worried. So did the others. Obviously no one else had thought of it. He looked forward, towards the cockpit. "Yo! Can we breathe the atmosphere!?"

"Scans show Earth-friendly gravity, temperature, and atmosphere!" the pilot yelled back.

Alex felt relief, though not as much as he'd like. That just meant that he might, possibly, have a fighting chance at survival. They still had to survive the landing, and _not_ land in the middle of a Covenant force, or an ocean. And a ton of other things.

"Whoa," the pilot said right as the rumbling subsided.

"What do you see!?" Alex called.

"An ocean. A lot of land. Mountains. Forests," the pilot replied.

"Any Covenant?"

"Can't be sure. Hold on!"

The pod jerked violently and Alex knew he'd just popped the air-brakes. Escape pods didn't exactly have a lot of maneuvering capabilities, on account of not really having an engine. The air-brakes were the best way of slowing the vehicle down. They were going to slam into something, sooner or later, because that was the nature of an escape pod, so it was really a matter of managing to slow the thing down enough to not die from such an impact.

It was basically the same principle as an ODST orbital drop pod.

That make Alex cringe in anxiety. One of a Helljumper's biggest fears was dying in a pod, as opposed to in combat. Probably the only thing worse than that was dying in a Pelican or, God forbid, a damned escape pod.

That was just humiliating.

So he simply clung to the chair and waited for the universe to flip that coin and determine whether or not he was fated to die in this pod.

He didn't have to wait long to find out.

The seconds snapped by as the pod blazed towards the ground, shrieking through the skies of this strange, alien place, and then metal kissed dirt. It was like the world exploded. He felt his body being yanked violently in one direction as they abruptly lost a lot of their velocity, and two people screamed, and then the pod was sliding along the ground, no doubt carving a groove into the earth, spitting up two geysers of dirt and gravel as it sheered through the landscape. Alex just held on and closed his eyes. It should end soon enough-

The pod hit something and suddenly turned sideways.

Absolute nightmarish hell broke out.

Now the pod was rolling violently, spinning them around again and again as it continued slowing, but at a much slower rate. Now everyone was screaming. Alex grunted as somebody detached from their seat and slammed into him, and he thought he heard a sharp snap somewhere in all that chaos. This was fast going from bad to worse.

The pod slammed into something again, probably a rock, and bounced into the air. For a second, they were free-falling, and then they hit the ground, bounced twice more, rolled for a bit longer, and finally, finally came to a halt.

They at least ended up upright.

After all the sound and fury, the screaming and rattling and shrieking metal and impacts, the silence was deafening.

Alex coughed and tried to catch his breath. "Who's not dead?" he asked after several seconds.

"Present," Carson moaned. "Think I broke my nose though."

"I'm here," Smith said through gritted teeth.

Alex waited. Fleming sounded off, as did three other Marines. Well, better than he had hoped. That meant that three people were either dead or unconscious. Alex hit the release and stood up on unsteady legs. Based on how he began moving, kneeling by the pair of prone forms along the narrow strip of space along the center of the pod, he determined that he at least didn't have any broken bones. He checked pulses and found two dead men: a Marine and a technician. The tech's neck had broken, and the Marine's helmet had either come off or he hadn't been wearing one, and his skull had cracked as a result of it.

Alex moved into the cockpit and peered briefly out through the front windows, which were cracked and caked with dirt. He saw sky, mostly. Blue sky, white clouds. A lot of good that did him. The pilot was dead, too.

"Get up, get moving," he said as he walked back through the pod, noticing no one had gotten up yet. Smith was in the process of getting her straps undone at least.

He heard a few muttering replies and left them to it as he got to the back doors. Hitting the button, the doors parted down the middle and opened. Now he could see...landscape. They had crashed into a grassy field, it seemed. There were a few trees and boulders nearby, and a dip in the land maybe thirty meters ahead. Stepping out, he took the rest of the area into view, trying to get a sense of the lay of the land.

To their left and behind them, cliffs. They simply dropped off into deep depressions. To the right was a similar sheer, a wall of raw rock rising straight up about a hundred feet. The only way to go was dead ahead, which looked like it broadened after about half a mile into more wilderness. He saw some streams along the way, what might have been a lake farther on, and-

"Crap," he muttered as about the same time he heard the telltale whine of Covenant engines, he saw a pair of U-shaped, purple Spirit dropships appear from over the cliff sheer about a hundred meters away. They immediately zeroed in on him and the pod, and started coming in low and fast. "Contacts inbound!" he snapped back into the pod. "Get out here! Get armed!"

He heard several curses and a lot of activity. Alex took another look at the situation with a more tactical eye. The pod had landed sideways, so that the back door was facing the cliff sheer. Which was good, it meant it would serve them as cover. So would the boulders that were nearby. They were behind them, closer to the edge.

The others came out, assembling hastily with him on the grass, beneath an alien sun.

"Aw shit," Carson whispered as he caught sight of the Spirits.

"What do we do?" Fleming whispered.

Alex turned and pointed at Fleming. "Get back in the pod, stay in the pod." He pointed to another Marine and Carson. "You two, at that boulder there. Provide cover fire. You and you," he said, pointing to Smith and another one of the Marines, "other boulder, same deal. You," he said to the third Marine, whose nameplate read **PVT. THOMPSON, F**, "here behind the pod with me. We'll wipe them out and then start moving, got it?!" he called.

Everyone snapped off replies and scrambled to get into position. Alex checked himself for weapons and ammo. Stupid, should've done that earlier, dammit. All he had left to his name was an M6D that was, thankfully, loaded, and a trio of spare magazines. There were more weapons back in the pod, but there was no time for that. The first of the Spirits was already here, coming to a hover maybe twenty meters away.

Alex studied it angrily as he got behind the pod, staying at the back end of it, while Thompson went towards the cockpit end. The purple vessel was a surprisingly basic vehicle, just a big, bulky U that had a pair of simple transport sections sticking out like prongs on a tuning fork. They were connected at the rear by a bulbous section that doubled as engine and cockpit. Jutting out from the bottom of that section was a three-pronged plasma cannon that even now as he looked at it was aiming towards him and the pod.

It opened fire. Brilliant blue-white flashes of plasma burst into existence and pounded against the other side of the pod, making it jump and jolt several times. It kept this up for another few seconds, then the assault slackened and stopped. Then the ship began to lower until it came to hover mere feet above the ground.

Now was the moment to strike.

Alex leaned out with the pistol, flicking on the 2x zoom, aiming at where the Covenant troops inside would be exiting. The bottom sections of the troop areas dropped open, and Covenant began to hop out from both sides. Each side held an Elite and three Grunts. The Elites immediately moved to cover while opening fire, while the Grunts at least attempted to do the same thing. Alex zeroed in on one of the Elites and began opening fire, keeping pace with it as it raced for a nearby rock that was big enough to hide its eight foot bulk. The pistol kicked in his grasp and enough bullets connected that he almost overloaded its shields.

Almost.

Cursing softly, he turned the gun away from the Elite, knowing it would hide until its shields had recharged. Instead, he focused on the Grunts. Two were in his field of vision, still trying to make it to cover. He popped one in the back of the head, sending the mask it wore that fed it a constant stream of methane atmosphere, flying off of its head in a spray of pulpy phosphorescent gore. Shifting slightly, he zeroed his sights in on the methane tank that those masks were attached to, it was being worn a little like a backpack by the second Grunt.

They were fairly secure, hard to rupture, which made sense. The Covenant might not give a crap about their cannon-fodded Grunts, but said Grunts were normally around Elites, and they cared about the Elites. So it would make sense to keep the Grunts from exploding easily if they were frequently in the same vicinity as the Elites.

But, sometimes, if you shot it just right with an explosive round…

Alex squeezed the trigger. The Grunt disappeared in a cloud of methane, flame, and vaporizing meat chunks.

...that happened.

He issued a small, grim chuckle, but immediately lost his humor as he saw that the second dropship was depositing its own infusion of reinforcements. Another pair of Elites and four Jackals this time. Jackals. He bared his teeth as he saw the nasty little vulture-like things coming together. If Grunts were the Privates in the Covenant army, Jackals were the Lance Corporals. They were better trained and better equipped, each one coming with circular, wrist-mounted shields of hardened plasma that looked more like a traditional shield, like knights used to use. They tended to line up and form shield walls, then fire off plasma bolts from around it at you.

Sure enough, that's what they were doing.

Alex saw that one of the Elites, a bullheaded blue-armored rookie, was charging their position. One of his fellow Marines was peppering the Elite with automatic gunfire. It was doing some damage, but not enough. Taking aim, Alex opened fire, popping off shots as fast as he could. The Elite's shield was quickly overwhelmed, and its head snapped back, a spray of purple gore escaping it in a misty cloud as Alex's last round in the magazine punched into its black eye and exploded out the back of its skull.

It dropped like a rock.

Alex fell back and reloaded as the others hosed his position down with return fire. As soon as he felt safe enough to do so, he leaned out again. Two things became apparent to him. The first was that one of the Spirits had peeled away and was already flying off into the distance. Maybe to bring more backup. And the other was still there, pounding their position with plasma fire from about five meters up.

The second thing was that he was having a hell of a time getting in a good shot. This was the problem when facing enemies that had a rechargeable shield. If they had good cover, they had the advantage. He fired off several shots at an Elite that was partially exposed because the tree it had made it to wasn't really broad enough for it. He kept up the fire and after about five shots forced the Elite to flee from its cover.

He kept up the pressure and brought down its shields.

Alex kept firing, but the big bastard was moving fast, and one of the other Elites took the opportunity to lean out and shoot him in the chestplate. He fell back, missing his opportunity, but just caught sight of the Elite in question, right before it reached more secure ground behind a boulder, take a shot through the neck. Falling back, he glanced around and realized the shot more than likely had come from Smith. She had a very satisfied and grim smile plastered across her pallid face, and she shot him a look.

Alex leaned back out and opened fire on the Jackals, trying to break their shield wall. This wasn't going as well as he had expected. Despite that initial good luck, they were pretty evenly matched. It could go either way. He managed to throw one of the Jackals off balance as he nailed its shield enough times, but before he could take advantage of that, he saw incoming needler fire. Those self-guiding pink spines were honing in not on him, but what must be Thompson's position. Alex began to shout a warning, then heard a scream that cut off very abruptly.

Cursing, he pulled back around, turning to face his fellow Marine, prepared to run over and drag him back into cover, but he instantly could tell that the man was dead. He'd fallen flat on his back, a pink needle a good six inches long sticking from his forehead. Even as Alex was watching, it burst, sending a spray of blood, brains, and bone fragments across the ground in a foot-wide radius, leaving an ugly, gory crater in what had once been the man's face.

"Son of a bitch," Alex snapped, and went back to work.

He opened fire, emptying what few bullets he had left, and managed to take advantage of a Jackal that had exposed the top half of its skull. He blew the top of its head off. Hastily reloading without pulling back, hoping to get lucky by making the Jackals' shield wall collapse, he saw that they'd reassembled themselves almost immediately, leaving their fallen comrade behind. And then the situation got a lot worse.

From behind a boulder across the way, a volley of four plasma grenades launched into the air, coming right for them.

"Plasma grenades incoming!" Alex screamed, pulling back while tracing their trajectory.

One of them went over the edge of the cliff behind them.

One landed against the front of the escape pod he was hunkered down behind.

Two landed almost perfectly near each of the boulders his Marine companions were taking cover behind. Alex began to scream a warning, finding himself briefly stricken by frustration as he marveled at the sheer bad luck it took for _two_ grenades, that had been thrown almost totally blind, to land with such perfectly awful placement.

Then they detonated.

The pod jerked towards him a foot, hitting him in the back and knocking him flat. He looked up, desperately trying to keep track of everyone. From Carson's boulder, he saw a man come sprinting out, but it was too late. The plasma grenade detonated practically a meter from him. His body was picked up and hurled over the edge of the cliff, and he screamed the whole way down. Twisting around to see what had become of Smith, he saw she was sprinting dead towards him. The other Marine was a few steps behind her.

Back-lit by the bursting plasma grenade, he saw the man go down under a hail of plasma fire and needles.

It almost seemed to be happening in slow motion.

Then Smith was at his position, and dirt and rocks rained down on them. Alex leaped to his feet, fueled by the sudden conviction that if he didn't turn this around, and _right now_, he was going to die. They were all going to die. He looked around, knowing that he didn't have much in the way of ammo left. He saw Thompson's corpse. The man had a pair of fragmentation grenades on him, and a few magazines of ammo had fallen out of his pocket. Alex scooped up the magazines, pocketed them, then grabbed one of the grenades and moved back to the edge of the pod. He primed the grenade, leaned out, and then hurled it towards one of the boulders, aiming so that it would fly past it, and land just behind the big rock.

It was a perfect throw.

He heard Grunts scream, and an Elite roar.

Then the grenade burst in a spray of fire and metal shards. He saw Grunt bodies flying everywhere, and he saw an Elite thrown out from behind cover. Not wanting to give the bastard a chance, he aimed, fired, and shot it twice in the head the second it had come to a halt. He needed to push this sudden reversal, take advantage of the uncertainty that he had hopefully thrown the Covenant into with that counterattack.

"Cover me!" he screamed, grabbing the second grenade.

Smith yelled something at him, but he couldn't make it out because he was already around the side of the pod and sprinting directly towards the surviving Covenant. In his head, he could see a topographical map of the area, where all the surviving Covenant_ should_ be, and his relation to it all. It wasn't perfect, but hopefully it would get the job done. First order of business: those goddamned Jackals. There were three Jackals and one Elite left, ideally. He didn't think any Grunts had survived that blast.

Priming the grenade, he hurled it at the Jackals.

It landed behind them, and they all began squawking and trying to flee. They disappeared in a geyser of fire, dirt, and blood. One Elite left, and it was coming out from behind its cover. It was sheathed in shiny red armor that glinted madly beneath the bright white sun. Alex screamed as he charged at it, opening fire. As it prepared to return fire, a second barrage of explosive M6D rounds began nailing it from behind him.

Smith, providing cover fire.

The Elite seemed less certain. It opened fire on him anyway, peppering his armor with plasma bolts that kicked like mules and burned in some areas. Alex ignored it all, fueled by mad fury and adrenaline. The Elite's shields collapsed. He got right up to it. The Elite raised one hand, preparing to crack his helmet open and cave his skull in. Alex didn't give the alien monster the chance, putting his barrel up into its split-jaw mouth and firing off a shot.

The top of the Elite's head burst open in a spray of pulverized flesh and brain matter.

It smashed to the ground and Alex heard the distinct whine of a plasma cannon charging up for an attack. He whipped around and saw that the Spirit was still there. And it was preparing to finish him. Looking around desperately, his eyes fell to the Elite he had just murdered. There was a bandoleer of plasma grenades attached to its belt. An idea was slammed together inside his head and he didn't hesitate long enough to think about whether or not it was a good idea. Most of his ideas were bad, but worked out, more often than not.

He detached the bandoleer, snatched it up, then began a cold sprint towards the Spirit. It opened fire with its plasma cannon. Dodging the bolts of plasma was easy enough, but it became harder the closer he got. When the time was appropriate, Alex activated two of the four grenades, then hurled the whole thing up as hard as he could.

One of the plasma grenades attached to the cannon and stuck there, fusing with the metal.

Alex kept running, breaking off to the right, and heard the almighty eruption of four plasma grenades going off in rapid succession. When he was a safe distance away, he turned back around and scoped the damage. The Spirit was still hovering there, but its plasma cannon was now a charred, sparking wreck of twisted purple metal. The dropship continued to hover for several seconds, as if trying to figure out what to do next. Abruptly, it lifted up, turned around, and began to fly away. Alex watched it go for a few seconds, then, with a deep sigh of relief, turned and began making his way back towards the survivors.


	4. BOOK 1: High Ground

**RECOMMENDED SONG:** _A Walk in the Woods by Marty O'Donnell_

* * *

Alex nearly stumbled as he closed in on the escape pod and the others. He was short of breath, his head pounding, and everything ached.

"Holy shit man, that was _amazing!_" Carson yelled as he approached.

"Thanks," Alex murmured in reply. He got as far as the pod, and then fell against it.

"Whoa! What's wrong?" Carson asked, stepping closer.

Alex reached up, hands fumbling for the clasps of his helmet. He was beginning to feel like he couldn't breathe. He got the helmet off, put it on the ground, then put his hands on his knees and tried to get his breath back.

"Oh my God, are you okay? You look like hell," Smith asked.

"Water. Now," Alex replied.

Carson stepped closer. "Were you hit?" His hands fell to a medkit that was clipped to his belt.

"Water! _Now!_" Alex snapped.

Carson disappeared into the escape pod. Alex closed his eyes. His ears were ringing and the world felt like it was starting to go away. He couldn't pass out, not now. He refused to. No way he was forcing them to drag his worthless ass across this place, not with Covenant in the area. He heard Carson throwing open lockers and dumping things onto the floor of the pod, and finally the Marine returned with a canteen of water.

Alex held out his hand and Carson slapped the canteen into his grasp. He unscrewed the cap, straightened up, then threw his head back and drank off half of it in one go. The only thing that stopped him from chugging the entire thing was the knowledge that he'd likely just puke it all back up. It was like throwing vinegar on a chemical burn. His relief was immediate, even though it was lukewarm, it was water, the life-giver.

For a few seconds, he leaned against the pod, eyes closed again. Slowly, he straightened back up once it felt like he wasn't going to pass the hell out. "Thank you," he said. "Sorry for yelling."

"It's fine...what's wrong?" Carson replied, looking at him uneasily. Fleming and Smith stood behind him with similar expressions, though he saw Smith's gaze flicking away, towards where the Spirit had fled. Good.

"I was in a coma before this," Alex said.

"Wait, seriously?" Carson replied.

"Yes. Thirty minutes before you and I met in that power station, I was literally being woken up from a coma, by chemical force I might add. I was on Reach. I went one-on-one with an Elite, one of the golden armored assholes. Bastard gutted me with one of those little plasma daggers they have, then damn near caved my skull in. Then I woke up on the _Pillar_."

"You were in a coma for _three weeks?_ And now you're doing this? You shouldn't even be up and moving around right now," Smith said.

"Tell me about it," Alex muttered. He spent a moment drinking off the rest of the canteen. The final time he tilted his head back, before he brought it back down, this time he opened his eyes. And froze. Slowly, he pulled the canteen down and continued staring up into the sky, mouth agape. "Holy mother of God," he whispered.

Somehow, he had forgotten the fact that they had crash-landed on a giant ring floating in deep space. Probably the fact that it looked so Earth-normal, that it could be almost any of the dozens of Earth-friendly worlds he'd landed on, had facilitated this lapse in memory. But now he was seeing what that would actually look like, and it was…

A bit much.

High overhead, in the sky, he could see the narrow band of the ringworld. Slowly, he began to lower his gaze, not so much inspecting the rest of the ring as being in awe of it. It broadened, widened, grew mind-numbingly enormous the closer he came to the 'ground', as much as there was a ground on the inside of a ring. It continued broadening until the edges became lost to clouds and mountain ranges and the horizon.

"That's a real mind-screw," Alex muttered.

He shook his head suddenly, then regretted it, partially. It caused a bolt of pain to shock into his skull, but it also grounded him again, brought him closer to reality.

"What the hell _is_ this place?" Carson muttered.

"No idea, but it's solid ground for now," Alex replied. He coughed a few times and then prepared to dole out orders. But stopped himself. It was easier to pass out commands if the people you were doing it to agreed that you were in charge. "I'm not technically the ranking member here, but I'm willing to bet I have the most experience, and the highest chance of getting us out of this alive and intact. Anyone disagree?"

"Nope," Fleming replied immediately, but Alex already knew his answer.

"After that display? No," Carson replied.

He looked at Smith, who looked back at him calmly. "No. That makes sense," she said.

"Fine. Good." He spun a finger in the air, indicating the area around them. "Gather up every last bullet and grenade you can find, we're going to need it. We start making tracks in five, got it?" He retrieved his helmet.

"Understood," Smith and Carson said almost at once, and Fleming murmured something in the affirmative. He still looked dazed. Alex wondered if he was going to have to talk to him. Dammit, there was never enough time for it all. He coughed and then carefully popped his neck. Finally, he walked back into the escape pod, getting ahead of Carson, who was also headed for the interior. Alex walked all the way to the cockpit and performed a quick search. The pilot was unarmed, for whatever reason, but the emergency medical kit still rested on the wall. Alex grabbed it, cracked it open, then extracted a pair of quick-release painkillers and dry-swallowed them. He needed to find another canteen, he was still dehydrated.

Once that was done, he added the medkit to his inventory, clipping it to his belt, and then he replaced his helmet. With it locked firmly in place, he set about helping them with the task of sweeping the area for mission-critical items. Also known as guns and ammo. Because they were going to need a hell of a lot of them to face whatever this ring had to throw at them. Right now, that meant a lot of Covenant. It was largely luck that they'd survived even _this_ encounter. He didn't like thinking about what other obstacles may lay ahead.

They worked efficiently, at least. Even Fleming did his duty at a decently brisk pace. Alex felt worry creeping into his cranium, slithering icily into his guts with a malignant, inexorable certainty. He'd been through a lot in his time. A _lot_. You had to go through a lot when you were a Marine for a dozen years, and then an ODST for three more, all while fighting in a nonstop horror show that was called a war. He'd survived things he probably shouldn't have, and more than once he'd been declared dead, only to have his heart somehow resume beating. Tired had taken on whole new meanings that he didn't even think possible. Words like _exhausted_, _drained_, and even _wasted_ had lost their punch. Sometimes he'd entered 'how am I still conscious' levels of exhaustion...and somehow he had kept on going.

Pain was another area in which he had investigated and inhabited hitherto unexplored realms of. Alex had always had a naturally high pain tolerance, and that had only increased over the years, but damn. He'd really seen some of the realities of that phrase, 'you'd be surprised what you can live through'.

Reach had pushed him hard. Maybe the hardest of his career, of his life.

They were the same thing, at this point.

Typically, when it got _that_ bad, he was given a chance to rest up. He supposed, technically, he _had_ been given a chance to rest up. He'd lounged for three weeks in a coma. Although if he felt _this_ bad after three weeks of recovery, then...damn, he'd been more messed up than he'd thought. After enough back and forth over it, he came to the same conclusion that he always did when he wasn't sure if he could do something:

It didn't matter.

Do it or you die.

It was amazing what you suddenly discovered you could actually do if you put it through that lens. So Alex took his pain, and uncertainty, and put them out of his awareness as much as possible. He helped them gather up guns and ammo from the pod and the corpses. In the end, he managed to outfit both Marines with assault rifles and pistols, including plasma pistols for backup, and a decent compliment of grenades and spare ammo. Fleming he gave three pistols: two human sidearms and a Covenant plasma pistol, given he might need to arm other survivors and pistols were damned good weapons to have. He himself managed to also load out with an MA5B, an M6D sidearm, a spare plasma rifle that he attached to his thigh, and a spare plasma pistol that he fitted to his belt. He also stuffed his pockets with spare bullets and several grenades.

And that made him feel a lot better.

In just under five minutes, they were making tracks. Although Alex felt better as he led them first over to the cliff sheer to keep them as out of sight as possible, and then along it, towards really the only place they could go, he still felt like crap. His guts ached, his head throbbed, his whole body felt sore and abused, like he was waking up from a week-long bender. He didn't do that anymore, but there had certainly been a time where alcohol had been his drug of choice. The suit helped, the painkillers helped, a half-dozen other little things were adding up nicely, but it was like trying to balance a see-saw, stacking anything he possibly could against the agony that simply existing currently was. It felt like he was walking a tightrope.

While hungover.

With a migraine.

He'd been through worse, Alex told himself. Definitely worse. Certainly. Although, admittedly, he'd never been comatose before. Knocked cold? Sure, dozens of times. But actually comatose for days or even weeks? Not once. Unless he was forgetting some chunk of his life. While it all tended to run together at this point, he was pretty sure he'd remember that. And now he was suffering for his stupid decision to take on a goddamned golden armored Elite when he should've just fallen back like he'd been ordered to.

It had been a desperate situation, and he was positive that if he didn't hold the sons of bitches off, the civilians he was desperately trying to help get properly evaced would die. It just occurred to him that he had no idea if he'd been successful, what it had cost to get him to the _Pillar_. It was probably something he'd never learn. So he just shoved that from his mind, too. Right now, he needed to focus on _right now_.

Alex glanced behind him. The others were keeping up pretty well. Fleming looked pale, though, paler than he had before. He was probably freaking the hell out. Well, this was a pretty awful situation. There was a decent chance one or all of them were going to die. The Covenant were kind of ruthless. Although they did seem to experience a tactical disadvantage in ground warfare, at least when it came to strictly troop-to-troop combat. If they were fighting all Elites, then humanity would be pretty screwed. But it wasn't all Elites.

There were Grunts, and Jackals, and sometimes Brutes, and Drones.

And these races were not as harmoniously united as they liked to believe.

Alex snapped out of his musings as he heard the rumbling of a plasma engine. A Spirit. It was getting closer. He looked around, hoping for cover of some kind. There! Up ahead, maybe five meters away, was a cave.

"Hurry up!" he snapped, and set off along the rock wall.

The others scurried after him and all four of them pressed themselves into the cave, having to duck.

"Is there anything in here? It's too dark..." Fleming whispered.

Alex activated his VISR, which illuminated the darkness beyond the threshold of the small cave, painting everything in neon green. The cave was indeed small, terminating maybe ten meters back, little more than a stubby tunnel with no offshoots.

"It's fine, I can see. Keep going," he said, hurrying them back.

This was going to be a bad place if Covenant decided to come in after them. Only one way out, no real cover to speak of. Definitely a gamble. But Alex was banking on the fact that there was a very good chance the Spirit would pass them over. They crowded into the cave and moved to the back, and there they crouched and waited, listening. Outside, he could hear the occasional gust of wind, the babbling of a brook somewhere nearby, and the Spirit, getting louder. They waited. The Spirit drew closer.

They continued to wait. Alex could feel his heart thumping against his ribcage. His hands felt wooden, molded around the assault rifle. The whining of the Spirit's engines reached their apex and seemed to hold there for a few seconds, and Alex held his breath, preparing for an assault to mount as he saw a shadow fall across the area outside the cave…

And then the shadow moved on, and the engines began to fade.

Alex waited close to thirty seconds before he decided to make a move. "Wait here," he said quietly, killing his VISR, and crept forward. Rocks crunched and shifted beneath his boots. Every sound seemed magnified. He slung his assault rifle and came to the threshold of the cave. Pressing himself up against the left wall, he peered carefully out, exposing as little of himself as possible. Looking back the way they'd come, he saw the Spirit hovering ten meters over the crash site. Uncertain figures picked among the remains of the fallen.

"Okay," he said, "let's go while we still can."

He waited until they joined him and then, once he was sure that the reinforcements weren't heading this way, nor were looking this way, at least as sure as he could be given the circumstances, Alex and his little troupe exited the cave and resumed their journey in the shadow of the cliff sheer. Several slow, painful minutes went by as they made their pilgrimage, and Alex had to trust that Smith, who was now bringing up the rear, would let him know if bad things were happening back there. He kept his razor focus on the path ahead.

The cliff sheer curved off to the right after a good fifty meters and then went off in that direction, and the (relatively speaking) narrow strip of ground that had been running alongside it opened up significantly. As they reached that area, Alex paused and looked around, considering his options. Although he could tell there was a tremendous amount of space to work with, a lot of it was obscured. The sheer drop-off to the left continued along and out of sight, providing a hard boundary there. There was a large field directly ahead of them.

It had a narrow river, more of a big creek really, that cut a track through its middle and terminated in a waterfall at the sheer. The field was bounded on the bottom and right sides by trees. Lots of trees. But the land running along the cliff sheer next to them rose higher and higher, forming a natural path slanting up it, and _that_ would give them a really good view of the area. He said as much to the others, pointing the path out.

"So that's where we're headed?" Carson murmured, studying it.

"Yeah. Everyone go nice and slow. Obviously the Covenant's active in this area. We should also try to get in touch with someone while we're up there," Alex replied.

"Couldn't hurt," Smith muttered.

They started up the trail, sticking to the wall as much as they could. Somewhere not distant enough, he could hear the distinctive whine of Banshee engines. As in, more than one. Although he couldn't see any now, he was sure that would change as they went higher. There was zero conversation as they ascended. Alex was grateful for that. Besides the obvious reason, right now he was really finding himself preferring some peace and quiet over talk. He was typically a solitary person, although sometimes the loneliness would bleed through and become toxic, seeping into his psyche and corrupting his mental health.

He tried to shake off the dark thoughts, but found it harder than usual.

Maybe that knock to the head and the subsequent coma had shaken something loose. He'd spent a very long time burying past torments and tragedies. He supposed it made enough sense that if you got traumatized enough, either physically or mentally, it could shake a lot of stuff loose, send it floating to the surface like corpses from a long sunken shipwreck, drifting to the water's threshold. And Reach had been traumatizing in every sense of the word.

At last, he reached the peak of the path.

And what a breathtaking view it was.

"Wow," he heard Fleming mutter under his breath.

"Let's see what we can see," Alex said, studying the miles of landscape.

There were a lot more trees. That much was obvious. Farther on, past more forest, was what appeared to be a Covenant compound and a lake. There was _definitely_ a lot more Covenant activity in the area. He saw a few more Spirits, and at least half a dozen Banshees patrolling the skies. Shit. But he saw other things, as well.

Three crash sites, other Bumblebee escape pods. Two had dropped into the forest, and a third had dug a furrow into the ground at the base of a mountain that the cliff sheer became after about a quarter mile or so.

Except there was a rift in the land between here and there, a narrow but deep trench that disappeared into the woods, meaning they'd have to find another way to that pod.

And…

"What the hell is that?" Carson muttered.

As he was studying that third site, from behind the mountain came a pulse of white light that resolved into what appeared to be a sphere of energy that shot into the sky. It almost looked like a comet, with a tail of energy. It resembled plasma, but...it was whiter, purer, than the blue-white the Covenant always seemed to use.

"I have no idea," Alex muttered, "but that's a hell of a good beacon. Smith, get on the horn, see if anyone's listening."

"On it," she replied, and he continued studying the landscape as he listened to her litany of contact attempts. A moment later, another pulse of energy shot up, and this time he couldn't help but follow it with his gaze.

That's when he noticed a few things that he'd missed before.

A moon, and a planet that hung, enormous, in the skies. Actually, he'd missed it _because_ it was so big. He'd mistaken it probably for an enormous cloudbank or maybe a mountain range.

"That is one big planet," he muttered.

"Planet?" Fleming asked. "Whoa! Crap, that _is_ a planet."

"Yeah..." Something occurred to Alex abruptly as he began making plans, and he looked down at his assault rifle. It came with a built-in compass. Actually, his suit did, too. But he studied the rifle's compass first.

North was currently aimed directly at that big-ass planet.

He turned left and then right, and it remained steady. Frowning, he then studied his own compass, being displayed holographically over his visor.

Same thing.

"Carson, what do you have for north?" he asked.

"Uh..." The Marine looked down at his assault rifle and moved it around a bit. He pointed towards the planet. "That way."

"Smith?" She broke her comms mantra to report the same thing.

"Son of a bitch, that's weird," Alex muttered.

"Maybe the planet's got a really magnetic core or something," Carson suggested.

"Maybe. Probably. Well, lucky for us, I guess. We've got a north to work with...Smith, anything?"

"Nothing," she growled. "Not enough boost, I think."

Alex gave it a shot, as in his experience ODST radios worked better than Marine radios, though he didn't think that was the problem. And he didn't get anything either. Which meant either the pods' radios were all busted, the survivors were busy, or…

There _were_ no survivors.

Time to find out which.

"Let's get to work. We need to check those pods," Alex said, and began making his way back down the path.


	5. BOOK 1: Search & Rescue

**RECOMMENDED SONG: **_Prayer by Disturbed_

* * *

"Okay...I'm pretty sure we made it," Alex said quietly.

The whining of the Banshee's engines continued to gently grow quieter as it faded away. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. That was _one_ step of the journey they had to make crossed off the list. He wanted to believe it was the hardest part, but the problem with situations like this was that any one of them could become the hardest part at any moment. He glanced back the way they had come, and looking at it through the trees and foliage, could scarcely believe that they'd made it that far. After coming down from the trail, they'd hugged the wall for as long as they could, until they had to get to the nearest available treeline.

It looked like miles. He knew it wasn't, but damned if it hadn't felt that way during the trek, especially with the way the Banshee engines had ebbed and flowed. And somewhere distant, there occasionally came the sounds of a battle being waged. It had faded by now. Alex took a few more deep breaths.

_I can do this,_ he thought firmly. _I_ have_ to do this._

Everything still ached, but the levels were more tolerable now. He had to get into his groove, lose himself in the field, let that machine adrenaline take over. There were times where he made decisions faster than his conscious brain could keep up with, in the heat of battle. His senses were like a mainline of data to the very core of his brain, and it reacted before he, inasmuch as you could separate yourself from your own brain, could. It was a weird, wild feeling, and it was intoxicating. You felt..._powerful_. Of course, that cut both ways.

"Come on," Alex said, striking off through the trees.

The first crash site was about half a mile away. Fleming and Smith stuck to the rear, and Carson began walking alongside him.

"Hey, so, Steele...you good? Like, to lead?" he asked after a few seconds, hesitation obvious in a voice that so far Alex had come to know as typically very stable and certain. He looked at the Marine. "I'm not trying to be an asshole," Carson said immediately. "I'm really not. This is real concern. The mission-"

"Comes first," Alex replied, returning his attention to the front, and just _barely_ having enough time to casually sidestep to keep from running into a tree. "I understand. I appreciate it. I'm good. If I'm not, if I really think I'm not up to it, I'll tell you. You seem like you know what you're doing."

"After three years, I hope so," Carson muttered.

"How'd you join up?" Alex asked after a moment.

"Oh, you know how it goes: Covenant drops in, burns all your friends and family, your dog, your home, and even, specifically, the kitchen sink, to glass, and you figure that well, you don't really have anything better to do but snag a rifle and get screamed at for six weeks on how to make your bed. Or learning the fine art of cleaning a whole floor with a toothbrush," Carson replied.

Alex chuckled. "Yeah. I've been there."

"You know we got a Spartan around?" Alex turned his black visor Carson's way once again, though briefly. "Yes, I said Spartan. I saw him, on the _Pillar_."

"Which one?"

"You on a first name basis with them?"

"Not exactly."

"The only one we all know about. Master Chief."

"Oh, crap...I wasn't sure if any of them had made it."

Carson sighed softly. "Yeah, me neither. Hell, I don't know if he even made it off the ship. He's the real deal, though. Seven feet of living death. Cleared a hallway of Covenant like it was nothing. I'd bet he's down here somewhere, though."

"Think any others made it?"

"I sure as hell hope so. One of those green-armored warriors is worth a hundred of us, hell, even a hundred of you ODSTs."

Alex thought about what he'd seen, what he'd heard, what he knew about Spartans, and found himself nodding. "Yeah."

Their conversation was sheered neatly off as they heard a deep, guttural laugh come from somewhere ahead. Alex held up his fist as he froze in place, and Carson snapped to a rigid halt beside him, weapon raised. They waited, listened, hunting fervently through the trees around them for the origin of the sound.

It was definitely an Elite. The sound of conversation began to drift, and he recognized the thick alien tongue of at least two Elites, and the higher pitched yapping language of the Grunts. They were pretty close to the first crash site. Alex motioned for the three of them to hold position, then he crept forward. Keeping his movements careful and slow, and using the trees and vegetation to mask him as much as possible, he crept forward until he could see into the clearing that the Bumblebee pod had created in its entry.

There was indeed a squad of Covenant moving among the wreckage and the dead.

This battle was over, and his fellow Marines had lost.

Alex grit his teeth and tightened his grip on his rifle. They weren't going to be able to celebrate their victory for very long. He twisted and gestured to Carson, indicating for him to come forward and bring the others. As they slunk along through the forest, Alex studied the situation. The Elites seemed pretty at ease, and the Grunts were screwing off, like Grunts usually did. If luck was on their side, and they acted swiftly and skillfully enough, they should be able to take the bastards without too much trouble. Alex was still reasoning it out when the others arrived.

He backed off slightly, carefully, to join them. Quickly, he pointed out positions among the trees to the left and right. "Wait for my go, then slaughter them," he whispered.

They all nodded tightly. Smith and Carson looked good, but Fleming still looked like he was going to be ill. Too bad, all hands on deck for this one. He couldn't afford to let the tech sit out any of these conflicts yet. They all carefully maneuvered into position. Alex resumed his original stance, now pulling a fragmentation grenade from his belt. That was going to get things going. Grenades were the great equalizer.

As soon as the others were in place, Alex pulled the pin and tossed the grenade. It sailed through the air almost serenely, landing about ten feet behind the rear of the still-smoking pod, in between an Elite and a trio of Grunts who were picking over their kills. The Elite reacted at once, tucking nicely into a roll as it dove away. Alex automatically began tracking it with his rifle, firing off the first volley of shots as the grenade blew.

The Grunts went up in a great, shrieking geyser of dirt and phosphorescent blue blood.

The Elite wasn't fast enough and its shields were blown clean off. Alex's rounds bit into its exposed flesh and the armor coverings it back. The Elite roared, trying to turn, but he gunned it down, putting the last burst of 7.62mm rounds through the back of its neck. With a gut-churning choking, gurgling sound, it collapsed to the ground. Around him, gunfire lit up the forest. Smith, Carson, and Fleming did their duty, and crossing lances of fire converged on Covenant positions, chewing into their tender bodies and knocking the life right out of them. The Elites attempted to return fire as the Grunts withered and died.

A spray of plasma broke a scattering of bark off the tree next to Alex, but that was as close as the two remaining blue-armored Elites came to hitting him. They attempted to retreat to the cover of the pod, but there simply wasn't time. Their shields were overwhelmed beneath the barrage of lead and they were cut down.

The gunfire choked off and they waited to see if any reinforcements were forthcoming. Finally, Alex stepped out into the clearing. "All clear."

"That was easy," Carson muttered.

"We got lucky," Smith said.

"Don't worry, I'm sure this place is just waiting to kick our ass," Alex replied. "Gather up supplies. I want to be out of here in two minutes. Fleming, grab dogtags."

They all snapped off quick responses and got to work. Alex looked at the corpses of those who had been in the pod, all Marines, now broken in death. Some of them had died in the crash, but it was clear that the Covenant had finished the job. Alex stowed his anger for now and stepped into the pod itself. He spied something useful on the floor, among all the random crap that had gotten thrown around in there during the crash and the subsequent firefight.

"Fleming, come here!" he called as he knelt and grabbed the rucksack he'd spied.

The tech appeared quickly at the end of the pod. "Yes?"

"I need you to load this with whatever guns, ammo, and gear you can find...are you good to carry this? I'd do it myself, but I need to be as limber as possible," Alex replied.

Fleming held out his hand. "I understand, it makes sense. I can do it," he said. He sounded...resolved. Well hey, this was something anyone could do: carry stuff. That was part of the reason Alex had decided to give him the responsibility, to make him feel like he was contributing more. But also because, yeah, not having seventy pounds of crap on your back helped keep you mobile.

"Thanks," Alex said, passing it to him.

Fleming resumed his grisly task of gathering dogtags, and Alex got back to his own job. He walked along the length of the banged-up pod and came to rest in the cockpit. Dead pilot here, too. Although in this case the pilot was a Marine who'd probably been saddled with the job in a moment of desperation. Alex activated the controls and brought the radio online, then synced it with his own suit communicator.

"This is ODST Steele to anyone in the region, do you read? Over."

A brief pause, then, _"Holy crap, an ODST?! Yes! I read you! Over!"_

"Where are you? Are you with one of the escape pods? Over."

"_Yes! We landed in a forest. There's six of us, two wounded, and we've got Covenant inbound! Can you help us!? Over."_

"Affirmative. Stay there and dig in. We'll get there as soon as we can. Out."

Alex quickly tapped into the pod's navigational equipment and ran a quick check. The nav systems were primitive, given the one-and-done nature of the Bumblebees, but one thing it _could_ do was track other pods. He assessed the location of the other two pods he'd seen, and discovered another signal. The pod couldn't identify what it was, beyond the fact that it was UNSC in origin. That was good enough for him. He tied each of these three locations to nav markers on his HUD, and near the top of his visor, three upside down, neon green triangles appeared, each with a different distance. He studied them.

The nearest pod, the one he'd just talked to, was four hundred fifty meters north. The second pod, near the mountain, was about a kilometer northeast. And the final mystery signal was a klik and a half to the northwest. Well, it could wait. Alex quickly left the escape pod and looked around. "We done?" he called.

"Got the tags," Fleming reported.

"Haven't finished searching the area," Carson said.

"It's gonna have to do. There are Marines and they need help, let's move out!" he yelled, and took off towards the first nav marker.

The others quickly followed.

* * *

The sounds of battle came to him again, and this time they were much clearer.

He heard the distinct banging of an M6D being fired off as fast as possible. The controlled chatter of an assault rifle. The whine of plasma weaponry. The time to risk suffering and death had come again. For Alex, it had become a state of being. He'd made sure to reload his rifle on the way over. Urging the others onward, he sprinted forward. The fighting sounded fierce. He needed to get in there and start carving out a victory.

Splashing through a creek, he fought to get a clear picture of the war being waged beyond the trees up ahead. There were Elites, he could see that much, at least three of them, maybe more. And several Grunts and Jackals spread out. There was the pod, in the center of the clearing, still smoking. The Marines were behind it, on his side of the line, and the Covenant were pressing the attack. He could see figures moving to the left and right.

They were flanking, moving in for the kill.

"Carson, Smith, left!" he called, and then broke right.

Pushing himself harder, he came around a large tree and surprised a group of Jackals looking to get in on the killing.

Alex leveled the assault rifle at them and made for damned sure they got in on the killing.

They squawked as they were cut down, their scrawny, birdlike bodies spraying the greenery with bright purple blood. He emptied his magazine into them and then stepped back behind the tree as someone returned fire from somewhere nearby. Alex ejected the spent mag and slapped a fresh one in, then kept moving, knowing he needed to press the attack. The window of opportunity granted to him might already be closed.

Alex kept running and then-

"Damn!"

Hot, sharp pain lanced into his left leg and he fell against a tree. More plasma fire rained down around him, peppering the area and shredding plants, leaving scorch marks on the bark. He took a moment to push the pain away, then peered quickly out to get a feel for the position of the Covenant. They were still gathered on the far side of the pod, but that was changing rapidly. They had learned that their situation was not only evolving, but deteriorating. Cursing, Alex grabbed and primed a plasma grenade, then chucked it towards them. At the last second, his vision went blurry and his leg partially gave out from beneath him, and he fumbled the toss, instead landing it a good two meters behind the enemy line.

Resisting the urge to scream another curse, he pulled back and shook his head violently, trying to clear it. Not right now, no weakness now. It was going to get him killed, or worse, someone else. He waited for the grenade to go off, switching to his pistol, and the second it did he leaned out and opened fire. Three Grunts went down in rapid succession from headshots, their little domes snapping back in sprays of phosphorescent viscera. He pulled back as return fire peppered his position, eating away at the tree that was his current shelter.

This wasn't what he would call sustainable.

His leg was burning and his head felt like screws were being drilled into it, chewing through bone and cutting into brain matter. He took a few deep breaths, and then he heard deep huffing and heavy footfalls, getting closer. All at once, he realized what was happening, and made a split second decision. He shoved his pistol into its holster, snagged the MA5B, and leaned out from behind the tree while simultaneously dropping to one knee.

Shouldering the assault rifle, he began screaming as he squeezed the trigger and started to lay as much fire as he possibly could into the hulking form of the blue-armored Elite that was charging his position. It roared, its shields pulsing and flaring angrily to life as bullets pinged off them, and kept going. Raising its own rifle, it opened fire, spraying his position with plasma bolts. One shot kicking him in the gut, another winged his shoulder. He screamed in pain but refused to cease his assault. The Elite staggered as its shields were overwhelmed and popped like a soap bubble. The stream of bullets began eating into its flesh and armor.

Deep purple blood spilled across the vibrant forest floor, glistening in the shafts of sunlight that slanted in through the canopy above. Another plasma bolt burned into him as it struck his leg and finally he fell flat on his ass. Alex emptied the rifle and the Elite went backwards, toppling like a felled tree as it slammed heavily into the ground. Gritting his teeth and panting, pain burning into him like acid into metal, he hit the eject button, groped for another magazine, found one of the hard, black rectangles, and slapped it into the slot. In a sitting position now, he shouldered the rifle once again and hunted for another target.

But during that last attack, he realized that the survivors had rallied and finished off the remainders with a few well-placed grenades and a lot of bullets. Alex forced himself to his feet as he saw two of the Marines approaching.

One was Carson, the other he didn't recognize. Carson looked worried.

"I saw you get hit," he said as he jogged over.

"I'm fine," Alex replied. "ODST armor is tougher than it looks."

"Already looks pretty tough to me," the new Marine murmured.

"Exactly. Status report."

"PFC Williams. There's four of us left, total, all Marines, and I'm, uh, highest ranking left. We've got one injured in the crash, messed up leg. We'll need time to set it, and he'll need help walking," Williams reported.

Alex fought the urge to lean against the nearest tree. No, not the urge, the need. _He_ was going to need help walking at this rate. "All right, get him patched up as best you can and have the others grab up whatever supplies you can. You got a ruck around?"

"Yeah, I think I saw one in the pod."

"Grab it, shove whatever you can into it. We go in five."

"On it," Williams said and hurried off.

"Take Smith and Fleming, go search the Covenant. Grab as many plasma grenades as you can," Alex said, looking at Carson.

"Okay...are you all right?" he asked, looking uncertainly at the no doubt bad burn marks on his armor.

"I'm fine. We don't have time. We have to get to that third pod," Alex replied.

"On it," he replied after just a seconds' hesitation, then about faced and jogged over to collect up the others.

Four more Marines to their cause. Bringing their number up to eight. Not exactly good odds, but certainly better than before. Doubling their fighting power wasn't anything to sneeze at. He glanced at the wounded man laid out on the ground that Williams was now tending to. Well, almost doubling. The pain had abated, but not by enough.

"Goddamnit," Alex whispered, and slipped back around behind the tree. He raised his visor and quickly opened his medkit, then found some painkillers. He needed some actual, real time to deal with these wounds, because he was sure he was burned in a few places at this point, but there just wasn't time. Even now, he could hear the distant staccato of machine gun fire and the occasional explosion. They literally didn't have time for him to be in pain. He rattled out another pair of painkillers and dry-swallowed them, then replaced the kit. He gave himself another thirty seconds, taking drinks from his canteen, then lowered his visor and stood back up.

Alex marched out to join Carson and the others in searching the field of Covenant corpses they'd created during the battle.


End file.
